part VI

When I was in High School, I had the house pretty much to myself. My healthy brothers were married, my sisters were both in Boston, and my other brother had chosen a completely anti-social existence that excluded everyone, including his mom, our mom and dad, and all of us. It was very empty, and then when I graduated, I became an exchange student – well that lit a fire for Mom. She wasn’t about to have that house empty, so she got an exchange student. I was living at home for college, so it was me and the French exchange student for a year. Then they contacted mom the next year needing a temporary place for a Brazilian kid whose host family didn’t want him (can you imagine!) She agreed, and of course he stayed for the whole year. Then they called to ask if she could take a Dutch girl a couple of years later – well yeah. So, then we were sort of 10 – really after you spend a year with someone, particularly at our house, they do feel like family. I cry when they have babies and get married; the French girl even had my parents at her wedding and treated them completely equal to her own French parents. They have all been back, the girls for visits, and the Brazilian came back and lived another year here while he attended college. It was during that year that my #2 brother’s ex-wife contacted my mom and said… “Hey I’m having trouble with this kid, and I think that your neighborhood would be much better for him to try to get through school than here in the city”… so my nephew moved in. My mom had the nephew in High school, the Brazilian kid in college, and two new puppies.